ATom-2 RF05 05 February 2017 Nadi - Christchurch
Our fifth research flight brought us from Nadi, Fiji south to Christchurch, New Zealand, with a little zigzagging across the international date line. Pre-flight cooling induced a little condensation on the outside of the aircraft. The video of that and the sunrise is available here.
It takes a lot of energy to get our overstuffed aircraft off the ground, so after our usual lumbering take off (video here), we flew due south, past New Zealand to 63S and looped back up to Christchurch. Unfortunately we missed a profile over Lauder as the site was completely clouded over. Lauder has a long-term TECCON site which measures profiles of CO2, CH4, CO, etc. between the surface and the sun.
Yesterday’s volleyball game had some sun-related casualties.
With the time change, we were flying during the Super Bowl (American Football national final) where the Falcons played the Patriots in Houston. The aircraft was under a sports embargo through the whole flight so no-one spoiled the result for anyone else. I polled the aircraft and found a nearly even split of Falcons and Patriots fan, although those against the Patriots really seemed to hate them! I don’t know enough about American football to get all the reasons why but I do enjoy watching it. It’s no substitute for a good rugby game but its not a bad replacement! Matt Berry and Dave Tanner from Georgia Tech in Atlanta (pictured) managed to set up a projector for us to watch it at the hotel on arrival and it was definitely worth staying up for! Sorry Dave!
This is austral summer and New Zealand sees a lot more sunshine that on our trip last August. This was a flight of contrasts where we saw CO2 uptake over the southern ocean and an extensive pollution layer between 4 and 9 km. Overall the Pacific was a lot cleaner on ATom1 in August than ATom2 in February and the models attributed much of that pollution to fires in Africa!
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